Setting the Window Wall

After weeks of fairly tedious structural remediation and sheathing, Owens Construction's Bill Owens and his crew decided to tackle the main window wall, an impressive assembly with LaCantina doors on the bottom, flanked and topped by nine sash set fixed windows, and two small awning windows down low to either side of the door—for ventilation on days they don’t feel like sliding open the entire door.

Caution was the order of the day as they passed the windows up to the crew on the scaffold and set them one by one, flashing them with Huber Engineered Woods' ZIP System flashing tape. “You only have one chance to do it right," says Owens, “so we take our time setting the windows as perfectly plumb and level as we can, after making sure the sills are fully flashed. This prevents problems down the road.”

The home’s original window wall had a major post down the middle, splitting the gorgeous view of Humphrey's Peak. So in the redesign, we chose to take the load from the center ridge down a bit and spread it to the sides of the wide center section door, to open the view. As you might remember, there is a square tube steel frame that carries the load, selected to present as small a cross-section as possible.